What is SEO(Search Engine Optimization)?
Search engine optimization is the process or a series of practices to improve your rankings in organic search results. And hence improve the quantity and quality of organic traffic.
OR,
To explain SEO in simplest terms. It is a process of optimizing your site in order to increase the visibility in search results of any search engine.
Whenever a person searches for any information or product related to your site, you want to rank on top of the search results. And SEO helps you accomplish that.
Because the more visibility you gain in search results, the more audience you’ll attract. And hence, there will be more chances of conversion of visitors into customers.
Why does anyone need SEO?
To understand the importance of SEO, let’s start with the definition. Definition of SEO mentioned three major aspects. Organic search results, the quantity of organic traffic, and the quality of organic traffic. Let’s understand them one by one,
Organic search results:
A search engine result page (SERP), consists of two parts.
- First, paid listings or PPC ads that you’ll generally see on the top of the SERP.
- And second, unpaid listings or organic search results, generally start after the paid listings on the SERP.
In the big picture, the PPC ads are the results that gained the top position in return for money. Whereas the organic search results gain their position after going through a huge number of ranking factors decided by the search engine.
So, you can’t pay to rank higher on organic results. That’s where SEO is introduced, to optimize your site in order to pass all the ranking factors of any search engine.
Quantity of organic traffic:
Everyone wants to gain heavy traffic, but it comes at a cost, Proper SEO. The calculation is simple, if you rank higher, more users are likely to click on your site. More traffic will bring more potential customers.
And can boost your conversions and profit. And you can rank higher with the help of proper SEO.
Quality of organic traffic:
Now imagine you got heavy traffic to your site and the charts are going higher and higher. But what if they are not the ones you were targeting for?
For instance,
Consider you run a company ‘Mech’ that creates robots but your visitors are searching for the game named ‘Mech’. Now that would be of no use and hence degrading for you.
As they will know that you’re not the ones they were searching for, they’ll leave instantly. And that will increase your bounce rate. Instead, when you gain quality users, the ones that we’re searching for precisely you, your conversion rate will go up too.
So, SEO can increase your rankings in organic search results. And that will result in gaining more quality users to your site.
How Does SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Work? (SEO Explanation)
Search engines such as Google and Bing have crawler bots or spiders to know the content on your website. The crawlers simply go through different websites and gather as much information as they can. Then Google stores it in its index.
Now when a person searches for something, the search engines go through their index. And apply their complex algorithms to determine the rankings of different web pages to show on a search engine result page.
These results are named organic search results, they can be web pages filled with text or graphics.
There’s a big list of factors that go into these algorithms and to keep offering the best results to its users, Google keeps updating these algorithms from time to time.
The process is surely ain’t that short, but not to worry we have an entire blog post dedicated to this. If you’re curious and want to know how google organizes information. You can read it here: how google organizes information
The constantly improving algorithm makes it hard for SEOs to understand it completely. But we know the major factors that affect the search engine rankings of a web page.
SEOs put in this information to optimize the website to align with the requirements of the Google Algorithm.
Any business or website owner who desires to grow and increase traffic and revenue must invest in SEO. An SEO ensures that your website’s technical elements are at their precise place. While constantly improving the on-page and off-page status of the website.
The continuous evolution of behaviours of search engines and users makes SEO an ongoing process forever.
Google’s Algorithm and Ranking Factors
Google has an algorithm to determine the rank of web pages for each searched term. They keep updating this algorithm to improve the search results. Google’s algorithm has some ranking factors.
And on the basis of these ranking factors, they determine the rankings of web pages.
We still don’t know every ranking factor Google uses to determine rankings. But during these years, we’ve gained an image of Google’s most important ranking factors.
These rankings factors can be listed under two sections:
On-page SEO factors
On-page SEO factors are the ones that can directly impact your site’s SEO. On-page SEO factors majorly include the technical and content-related aspects of your site. Technical aspects like the quality of your code and the speed of your website.
Whereas content-related aspects are the ones like the structure, linking, and the quality of the content present on your website. On-page SEO factors partly determine the rankings. The other part is determined by the Off-page SEO factors.
Off-page SEO factors
These factors have nothing to do with what’s on your website. Instead, these factors majorly include the linkings from other websites. These factors can sometimes be harder to influence than on-page factors.
Unlike on-page factors, these factors depend on links from other websites. The major part of these off-page factors is covered by the number and quality of links leading to your website. The more quality and relevant sites show your links on their website, the higher your position on Google can be.
Also, you cannot overlook the competition of your specific niche. This can also be considered a ranking factor. As ranking in a specific niche can be harder than others. Therefore, the size of the competition also matters as a factor in your ranking.
Types of SEO:
Based on the objective of the optimization of your website, SEO can be divided into several categories.
For instance, If you’re a local shop optimizing your site to rank locally, it will be named ‘Local SEO”. Whereas, if you’re a large business, optimizing your site for global rankings, it will be named ‘Enterprise SEO’.
While many of them do not include unique SEO practices, some of them do include unique practices that are performed only during that specific type of SEO. Here we will look up the most important ones:
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the procedure of making sure that your website aligns with the technical requirements of the search engines. The major elements of technical SEO count as crawling, indexing, loading, and website architecture. Technical SEO is the very first step of your SEO journey and is equally important.
All the quality content that you make will go for nothing if Google can’t crawl and index your site. Because that’s how they’ll get to know about your website. So, you have to get that straight.
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO includes all the optimization that is done on your website apart from the technical things like a sitemap. This mainly focuses on all the content that is present on your website.
The On-Page SEO includes all the existing content, keywords, meta titles, headers, meta descriptions, graphics and more.
The most important On-Page SEO practices to consider, include:
- Researching Keywords
- Optimizing Meta Data
- Performing Internal Linking
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO can be considered simply everything that does not happen on your website. Every tactic that you perform outside of your website that directly or indirectly helps you rank better on SERPs comes in off-page SEO.
While most Off-Page SEO is all about link-building, some of the exercises are non-link related off-page SEO.
Off-page SEO helps one earn backlinks, increase brand awareness and gain some quality signals to tell Google that you’re trustworthy.
The most important Off-Page SEO practices to consider, include:
- Link Building
- Creating Shareable Content
- Content Marketing
Local SEO
The general SEO lets you target the whole world and rank all around the globe. But what if you’re a local business and want to attract some customers nearby you. Targeting the whole world would be of no use to you. That’s where Local SEO walks in.
Local SEO is the practice of enhancing your website to rank on local searches around you. And gain traffic and potential leads nearby you. The best practices for Local SEO include creating content for people around you using local keywords. Also, creating and maintaining a Google My Business profile and Building its NAP citations around the internet.
Local SEO is surely not for everyone. But if you have a physical shop and want to gain customers or build awareness in the locality, Local SEO can surely help you out.
Now, if you already have a website and don’t know where to start, the next one’s for you.
SEO Audit
An SEO audit works for a website just like a regular health checkup for a human. In an SEO audit, one looks at your website’s technical structure, on-page components, and off-page mistakes.
The objective is to bring out all of the issues these SEO aspects had and then improve them. That will help your website to perform better than before.
Just like a health checkup, an SEO audit is needed to be done every once in a while. Because if you overlooked an issue in the technical structure or any other aspect of your website, you could lose your rankings and hence, a lot of users.
Also, they keep you up-to-date, as Google keeps updating its algorithm, you have to keep ensuring that you are on the right path.
How is Search Engine Optimization Achieved?
Now, this is the most amazing question that I usually hear from beginners. And trust me, the answer is more fascinating. The shortest answer is, You Can Never.
Yes, one can never achieve search engine optimization as it’s not a target or price rather it’s the path that we walk on. The price is achieving the top rank or getting more conversions and yes you can achieve that. But SEO is an ongoing process that will never stop.
An SEO-optimized website is one that ranks well, gains quality and quantity of traffic while converting at a high rate. As we already discussed that behaviors of search engines and users keep changing, the SEO of the website needs to be aligned with them as well.
How can we help you set up?
You must have got by now that Search engine optimization (SEO) in digital marketing is quite important and you can’t miss that out. But confused about where to start from? The easiest solution is, Give us a Call.
Whether you’re looking for rank on local searches or being stuck in a highly competitive niche, we’re here to get you through. In our SEO services, we offer free SEO audits, so that you and we both get an image of your website’s current issues and future objectives.
We believe in generating trust and long business relationships. That’s why we never hide any information about our work procedure. We’ll keep you aware of every penny that we spent. And promise to offer you heavy ROI (return on investment).
If you’re still confused, just drop us a mail at [email protected] We can discuss your plans and dreams and how we can help you achieve that. We will be waiting.
Conclusion
Let’s ask again, What Is SEO In Digital Marketing Or What Is The Explanation Of SEO?
Simply the process of making your website good enough to rank on top of the SERPs. SEO or search engine optimization in digital marketing holds a large ground. And that’s what makes it one of the most critical elements of a website or online business’s growth.
There are a huge number of SEO practices that are performed to improve a site’s SEO. We will be covering all the aspects and best SEO practices that can boost your site’s ranking and traffic.
Even if you’re an SEO beginner, you’ll know all the basic and some required advanced SEO terms at the end of our SEO series. So, stay tuned for best seo explanation in digital marketing.
